Railroad-chair



UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

JAMES H. MORLEY, OF S'I. LOUIS, MISSOURI.

RAILROAD-CHAIR.

Specicaton of Letters Patent No.A

To all whom "it may concern:

Be it known that I, JAMES H. MORLEY, of St. Louis, in the State of Missouri, have invented a new and Improved Method of Joining Together the Ends of Railroad-Cars; and I do hereby declare that the following is a full and exact description thereof, reference being had to the accompanying drawing and the letters of reference marked thereon.

The nature of my invention consists in providing the ends of railroad cars with what I denominate a divided chair, to be made of wroughtor cast iron, and to be bolted together with one, two or more bolts, passing through each half of it, and under the bottom of the rail, to be secured with nuts or keys, so as to draw the parts of the chair together and make them grip the bottom fiange of the rail on its top, side, and bottom, thus fishing and trussing the joint so firmly as to prevent the end of one rail from dropping below the end of the other with which it is joined, thereby saving their ends Jfrom being battered or crushed by the percussion of the truck wheels against them and preventing the oscillation and rocking of rolling stock, which is an object of great importance, but is not effected by any railroad chair now in use.

To enable others skilled in the arts to make and use my invention, I will proceed to describe its construction and application.

I take a rail of the ordinary form and construct my chair with such an internal form as will apply to and t the bottom flange of the rail on its top and bottom, as shown at A A, Figure l. I make this groove slightly crowning in its longitudinal direction, as represented by the direction of the red lines B, B, Fig. 2. I make the exterior of the chair as shown on the drawing, or of such other form as circumstances may require. I make the bolt connecting the parts of the 16,147, dated December 2, 1856.

chair to pass through them and under the bottom of the rail, as shown at C, O, O, Figs. l and 2. By screwing up these bolts the crowning of the grooves, as above described, gives the joint a tendency to raise above the middle of the rail, thus imparting to it a vertical stiffness, so that a weight placed upon the chair tends to compress and tighten the joint and render the two rails as one continuous bar without interfering with their tendency to expand or contract. I design making the joint either on or between the cross ties, and also of putting lugs in the grooves at A, A, as shown by the dotted lines, to mesh in corresponding notches in the flanges of the rail, so as to prevent them from slipping endwise, if from experience I should deem it necessary. I propose using felt, or a known substitute, between the groove of the chair and the flange of the rail to ease the grip of' the chair to the rail and render it less liable to fracture, if its use should be necessary. I also design using india rubber (vulcanized) washers under the heads of the bolts, if the stress on them should be so rigid as to make their use necessary.

I claim- Finishing the joint of railroad bars with a divided chair on the bottom flange of the rails, when so constructed that the divided bed of the chair shall not come into contact with or impinge upon each other so as to bear any part of the strain of a weight upon the rails, but leave the upper jaws free to bite with the whole strain of the bolts whereby they are made to grip the rail joints more firmly as the cars more over them, without the necessity of being supported upon ties or bearers as heretofore, in the manner substantially as described.

JAMES I-I. MORLEY. /Vitnesses:

HENRY C. PooocKE, AMos BROADNAX. 

